08/15/2012

The secret to success in any social network, or blog, marketing strategy is elevating the content direction to beyond just messaging about the brand product. The challenge is to ensure that this value-added, or what I call "selfless content", supports the brand promise and values.

Diva Marketing/Toby: In any new social media endeavor, they will not come unless you tell them. How is Baylor creating awareness for its Pinterest boards?

Ashley Howland: We recently created a tab on our Facebook page where fans can peruse our Pinterest page without ever leaving Facebook. We have also added the Pinterest button to our website, business cards and will soon be adding it to our email signatures.

Occasionally, we feature a Pinterest recipe of the week on Facebook and Twitter or showcase holiday ideas from our “Healthy Holidays” board (that’s my favorite board by the way!). We are also planning to experiment with Pinterest contests in the near future which will cross over to our other communities.

I’m a big believer that content doesn’t have to stay on the site it originated in. It’s natural to compartmentalize and segment your communities, but you don’t have to! If you have an awesome pin or a compelling blog post, share it across the board.

Don’t keep a pin on Pinterest, a post on Facebook or a tweet on Twitter. Share it amongst your other communities. Cross over is key. At the end of the day, you are managing one big community of people.

Diva Marketing/Toby: Pinterest provides interesting consumer insights. Is Baylor doing any analysis beyond a quantitative count of pin, comments, repins, etc? If you what have you learned about your community?

Ashley Howland: Measurement is huge when it comes to Pinterest! You can count repins and likes all day, but it won’t give you an accurate picture of what’s really going on. Measuring click-throughs is critical.

We use Pinerly.com to measure our Pinterest activity. It’s been a great tool not just for measurement, but as a workaround for pinning static content on our website that may not have a compelling image to accompany it (as I mentioned above).

We have learned that just because something isn’t repinned, doesn’t mean people won’t like it. We have also learned that like almost everything else in life, presentation is everything. You have one image to communicate your message and grab their attention so make it count! In this case, people do judge a “pin” by its cover.

Diva Marketing/Toby: Let’s talk about docs. Are you seeing any physicians successfully using Pinterest?

Ashley Howland: Not yet! But that doesn’t mean we won’t. Physicians have been very slow to adopt social media. Some are very sceptical of it and fear that it will put them at risk for violating patient privacy laws.

As I mentioned above, all social media sites have their risks, but training and education is key.

Have you seen Dr. Oz’s Pinterest page? It’s a natural fit for him and he’s doing a great job!

Q: To wrap this, what lessons learned can you share with us about healthcare in the world of Pinterest?

1. Don’t be afraid to stick your toe in the waters of Pinterest…it’s exhilarating! J

2. Good content is all around you. It’s a matter of making it “pinable.”

3. Think visually.

4. Don’t be a self-serving brand. Make sure you’re pinning things that are useful or interesting to other people.

5. Pin frequently, but not excessively. I’ve heard pinning up to 20 times a day (both original content and repins) in the evenings and on weekends is the key. However, there is no scheduling app for Pinterest just yet so that may be difficult. (Pinerly promises that it’s coming soon!)

08/09/2012

This week I was called to jury duty. The Honorable John Doran, Jr. presided.

A jury selection is much like making a film or a commercial. There are a lot of stops, starts and waiting around while lawyers and judge side-bar conversations that you can't hear but would so love to be invited to the party. Voir dire (questioning the jury panel to establish suitability) of the 50 member panel took over a day.

Much like the beginning of a focus group, to help respondents develop a comfort level for future complex questions, the defense attorney asked what I thought was an interesting multiple choice question. How did we feel about our day in court?

1. Excited to be part of the process

2. Interested in the process

3. Anxious or apprehensive

4. Frustrated or perhaps a little resentful

An ah ha moment. Each of these feelings could be held by people new to social media or even challenged with taking social media initiatives to the next level. The big realization .. we rarely stop to acknowledge and address these concerns before we plow into creating strategies and executing tactics. The results can be too many side-bar conversations that add time and dollars to our process.

Several times Judge Duran offered explanations about the proceedings that brought context helping us not only understand the legal whys of the Court but the humanity of the judicial system. I suspect this was also his way of easing the boredom of the wait .. his and ours.

As a group, we were engaged with Judge Duran but on a passive basis. That is no one commented or asked a question. Our thoughts were our own not encouraged to be shared. One might say we were a captive audience and the good judge held our attention because he provided a distraction from the tediousness of the day.

But .. he spoke to us about what he obviously cared about and showed us his humanity. How can you help but engage with that type of person?

Later that night I conducted a directed discussion with a group of Millennials about their Facebook habits. Although Facebook of course encourages interaction through likes and comments, the feedback was that a like did not necessarily equate to brand engagement. And most certainly a random like could not be taken at face value to gauge brand loyalty.

As Facebook continues to change its mysterious black-box algorithms those Likes, Comments and Shares, especially on brand pages, become more elusive. Brands are turning to pay-for-play by boosting posts and dropping ads. However, take a look at your Facebook Insights. Your reach maybe greater what percentage did your engagement increase? It might be interesting to begin to track the people who do Like, Comment and Share most frequently. Those just might be your raving fans.

We discussed brands that drop multiple daily status updates that are little more than thinly veiled ad disguises. Where is the humanity in that?

An ah ha momement. As a marketer living in the age of social networks I think about what engagement means in terms of bringing a brand to life.

How do we know a like from a passing post in a customer's stream was clicked while multiple tasking or to ease the bordom of the day? We don't. Yet we make multi-million dollar decisions based on what equates to a teeny percentage of our base of page likes.

Just asking ..

1. Are we tipping the social media scales of engagement with wishful thinking that likes = engagment = expanded awareness = monetization?

2. Are we taking the easy way out, of a complex situation, to justify our activity in social networks?

3. Are turning one of the most exciting and innovative communication stategies of 21st century marketing into another mundane messaging channel?

4. Are we missing the opportunity to create authentic people-to-people engaged relationships?

But .. he spoke to us about what he obviously cared about and showed us his humanity. How can you help but engage with that type of person?

Interestingly, it's a lesson that the Food Network is also learining. People relate to people.

Perhaps some social media brand managers might take a lesson or two from His Honor.

08/01/2012

The relatively fast Pinterest adoption rate, of what we might call nontraditional to social media verticals, is amazing to me. From financial services, manufacturing to B-to-B, Pinterest seems to capture the imagination of marketers.

In particular is the healthcare sector where many hospitals and medical centers are embracing visual communications and doing interesting work on Pinterest.

I was very excited when Ashely Howland from Bayler Healthcare System agreed to tell us the back-story of Bayler's Pinterest strategy. Ashely graciously shares her insights and learnings. In fact, her interview was so rich and detailed that we decided to run it as a series. Please join me in welcoming Ashley to Diva Marketing!

About Ashley Howland is the social media manager for Baylor Health Care System. She has been with Baylor for 8 years where she got her start in Media Relations. She took on Baylor’s social media efforts in 2009 “on the side” and it quickly turned into a full time job.

Diva Marketing/Toby: I applaud Baylor’s step into Pinterest. Your boards were one of the first that I pinned to my Brand Board. Perhaps you can shed some light on something I’ve been thinking about since I first saw your boards.

Healthcare, as an industry, was slow to participate in the social web. However, it seems the opposite is true for Pinterest. On a high level why do you suppose that’s the case?

Ashley Howland: Thanks for adding us to your brand boards! You’re right; health care was very slow to adopt social media. One of the biggest reasons for that are the regulations in our industry, i.e. patient privacy laws.

We have now embraced it and are using it to inform and educate the public with credible health information. We’re also using it to learn from them as well…what kind of experience they’re having in our hospitals, what type of information they’re looking for and most importantly, we’re using it to help our patients connect with each other for support.

I think one of the biggest reasons Pinterest is so popular in the health care industry is because of its demographic. Nearly 70% of Pinterest users are women, which is a target audience for the health care industry. Women usually make the majority of health care decisions in a household and are usually the ones searching the web for health information.

Pinterest is also not as personal as some of the other social platforms. While Facebook and Twitter are hugely popular, not everyone is comfortable interacting in those spaces. Millions of people have accounts, but they may not be very active on those sites.

I think Pinterest fills that void. It appeals to the people who may not want to share the personal details of their life, but have no problem sharing about their interests and hobbies.

Diva Marketing/Toby: Let’s explore Baylor’s presence on Pinterest. What was it that first caught your interest about Pinterest to take the “pin leap?” When did you pin your first pin?

Ashley Howland: We pinned our first pin in January of this year. I was using Pinterest personally and became addicted to it very early on…like everyone else!

We decided to take the “pin leap” because it seemed like such a natural fit for us. As a hospital system, we have historically been concerned with treating illness, but now more than ever, we are responsible for treating wellness.

Social networking sites are the perfect place to do that. With sites like Pinterest, we can not only inspire people to live healthier lives, but we can show them how.

We are taking the wealth of knowledge and expertise we’re privy to inside the walls of our hospitals and converting it to an easy-to-comprehend visual format.

Diva Marketing/Toby: Currently Baylor has 21 boards with a wide range of topics from healthcare games and tips, food. holidays, fitness and even animal therapy and boards about Texas. How did you determine the topics? Any surprises on the reactions from your community?

Ashley Howland: At first, we determined the topics of the boards based on the content we already had available. We also started paying attention to what people were pinning on our personal Pinterest spaces. In addition to home décor, fashion and arts and crafts, I noticed that my friends were pinning lots of recipes.

Baylor may not be able to help you put together a stylish outfit or show you how to Mod Podge a picture frame, but we’ve got recipes covered! We also noticed that people were pinning a lot of fitness pins and just everyday tips and tricks. We have an abundance of printable health checklists and how-to guides on our website so we pinned them and people loved them!

The biggest surprise was the reaction we got from our Interactive Health Quizzes board. We have many health quizzes and risk assessments buried on our website so we dug them out and started pinning them.

I was surprised that some of them didn’t get any re-pins or likes, but once we started measuring the click-throughs, we realized they were wildly successful! Some people may be shy or embarrassed about pinning a “Are you at risk for depression?” quiz or a risk assessment for cancer, but they will definitely click-through to take the quiz.

Diva Marketing/Toby: What types of content are you pinning?Ashley Howland: What’s great about Pinterest is there is an audience for just about anything! Sometimes brands are frustrated by it because they think they have nothing to pin. On the contrary.

Content is everywhere you look! You just have to think visually and figure out a way to re-purpose it for this medium.

Got a blog post with a list of tips? An online interview with a subject matter expert? Find a graphic for it and pin it! If you have graphic design skills or have access to a graphic designer, that’s the key. And don’t forget about videos! Videos are becoming very popular on Pinterest. In short, almost anything can be turned into a pin.

That being said, we pin just about anything we can find at Baylor. Instead of being an afterthought, Pinterest has become a driving force for our social media efforts. Every piece of content we create, we try to think of how we can turn it into a pin. Instead of communicating with words, we’re all learning to communicate visually.

Diva Marketing/Toby: Understanding that Pinterest is still in its infancy, what are your measures for success?

Ashley Howland: Although Pinterest is still in beta phase—which is pretty incredible considering the number of users—there are already third party websites available that can help you measure your success.

Right now, we are using Pinerly. Pinerly is amazing because it not only tracks your click-throughs on a pin, it allows you to upload content that may not have an image already attached to it. For example, say you have a great blog post or an article on your website titled “5 tips for working out at home,” but there is no compelling image on the page. If you are using Pinterest to pin this content, it won’t work. However, Pinerly allows you to upload an image of your choice while posting the link behind it.

Another measurement tool that I recently discovered is Curalate. I’m really anxious to try it out!

Diva Marketing/Toby: With any social network initiative there are risks associated with active participating. What were Baylor’s challenges and how did you overcome them?

Ashley Howland: You’re right; every social networking site has its risks. Unfortunately, Pinterest has been singled out lately and a lot of attention has been called to its Terms of Service. They have made a lot of changes to their language about copyright issues, but the truth is their Terms of Service are very similar to other social networking sites as well.

As far as copyright issues are concerned, we try very hard to pin as much original content as we can. We definitely repin the brands and people we follow, but we try to make sure we repin from credible sources and that the original source of the content is credited.

One of our biggest challenges with Pinterest, and any social media outlet for that matter, is to make sure we are sharing or repinning content from credible sources. Many people will repin without clicking through right away.

As a brand, we click-through every image we want to repin to make sure it’s coming from a credible trusted source, that we’re not endorsing a product, and most importantly to make sure the pin is not linked to a spam site. Even our beloved Pinterest is not safe from spammers, unfortunately.

Diva Marketing/Toby: In social networks there are two paths we can take: passively providing content and actively engaging within others. At this point, most people seem to be sharing content/pins but there is not a lot of conversation happening.

How active is Balyor in terms of engagement e.g. commenting, repining, likes?

Ashley Howland: Engagement is a big priority for us, but to be honest, we haven’t really taken advantage of fully engaging with pinners…yet. On occasion, we’ll thank someone for repinning us, comment on other pins and give out likes, but engagement takes time and a lot of effort.

It’s a big and very important job. We have recently increased our staff to include two community managers and one of their primary goals is to spend time interacting with pinners.

Diva Marketing/Toby: One of the big questions that I’m asked is how do you find time to include another social network into your communication outreach? Would you give us an idea of the resource structure (people) and approximate how much time you’re investing to Pinterest?

Ashley Howland: I believe you get out of these networks what you put into them. If your intent is to share content, that’s great, but then you’re only scratching the surface of social media and using it as another one-way communication channel.

It’s a two-way channel. In fact, it’s more than that…it’s a community of real people. I think brands are finally starting to realize that social media isn’t a side gig. It’s an integral part to any communications strategy. Most importantly, it’s not free which is a big misconception. Of course the tools are free, but the effort that goes into them isn’t.

I think you have to figure out what your priorities are and what your company’s goals are and then go from there. Not every business will greatly benefit from Pinterest. Evaluate your objectives and figure out where you should be spending your time.

Baylor is very supportive of our social media efforts and has given us additional full time employees to help manage our social media presence. I recently hired two community managers who are doing a great job of not only finding and creating relevant content, but talking to our communities and helping us reach beyond the day-to-day postings.

We could all stand to do more listening instead of talking in our social landscape!

In addition, our Public Relations/Media Relations department has incorporated social media as a part of their jobs.Everyone in our Marketing/PR department; including many of our clinical employees such as physicians, nurses and dietitians; is encouraged to attend what I call the Social Media Campfire, a monthly discussion of the tools we’re using and how all of us can make them a part of our communications toolbox…no matter if you’re in the Social Media Department or not.

Continue the conversation with Ashley and the social media team from Bayler Healthcare System